ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century, the regulatory framework was, for the most part, identical to the one that regulated, until it was definitively abolished in 1808, the manufacturing process, the requirements to practice one’s trade, the relationship between the various trades involved and the practical organization of control. The primary reason that the Leaden hall market played such a role in the London leather trade was that tanners were obliged to have all their products inspected there before they could sell them. The new petitioning campaign launched by the tanners in 1807 in favor of the abolition of the leather inspection focused new debates. The quality of the leather on sale on the market remained subject to expertise, but the assessment was not tied to any norm. As with the skins under the Flaying Acts, the collegial verdict of the inspectors, the assessment of their majority, fixed the standard and decided whether the leather was “sufficiently tanned” and “sufficiently dry.”
